It's funny, the Capitals announcers were talking about him being a pending FA this year and how he's disappointed for the 'Canes. The only one of the pending FAs they thought would get any interest is Tim Gleason. Amazing that Ponikarovsky actually got traded 90 minutes after the Canes blanked the Caps.

It's funny, the Capitals announcers were talking about him being a pending FA this year and how he's disappointed for the 'Canes. The only one of the pending FAs they thought would get any interest is Tim Gleason. Amazing that Ponikarovsky actually got traded 90 minutes after the Canes blanked the Caps.

Only cost a bag of pucks. I like his Big-ness out there already. We'll see where it goes.

Courtesy of HFBoards, it's Columbus's season encapsulated in one picture:

I think the fact we have 6 players on IR (Three of which are a good deal of the offense, Carter, Wisniewski, and Umberger) and Mason's season long 4 goal per game, every game derping is hurting us way more than Dorsett (15, looking up) and MacKenzie (24, let's call it a 'derp' look). MacKenzie's +/- is 7 which is the best on the team.

While the Blues have played a ton of home games, they will be playing Detroit in Detroit for the 3rd time in less than 30 days...

Is this important? Yes. The Blues are dominating at home as are the Wings. Why can't they balance this thing out a little more?

Oh, well. One of these days the NHL won't screw someone over with ridiculous scheduling that has a team playing over 80% if their home games in a 3 month window (a mid-season window at that) - with the exception of facing one specific key division rival on the road 3 times in less than month in that same 3 month window.

Suck and Pluck. They will continue on this path until they have a complete team of 1st round picks.

Yes, I'm sure that's the organizational strategy.

Look, the Oilers suck right now, no doubt. The game Saturday night made me want to puke. I'm sure it has nothing to do with the fact that we have 1 NHL level defenseman (two if you count Sutton) playing right now, and our goalie is a 39 year old drunk who everyone in Edmonton not named Renney or Tambellini knew was going to suck this year. It probably has nothing to do with the fact that Eberle, Hall and RNH all went out at close to the same time with injuries, never mind Gilbert and Whitney (who, given the history with his foot, will likely never play at last years level again), and Hemsky who started the year injured and hasn't found his game back yet. This team has been gypsy cursed for the last few seasons as far as injury goes, and our GM doesn't seem to realize that going out and signing Cam Barker doesn't count as getting a top defenseman.

Some of the pieces are there. Now the Oilers desperately need to obtain two top D men and adopt something similar to a long term goalie plan, since Dubnyk doesn't appear to be it. October shows that when this team is playing defense and getting goaltending support, it's going to be an elite level team. Management just needs to wake up and realize that 10,000 prospects are only useful when you can parley them into actual NHL players, either through development or else trading them away for established players. More firepower is fine if they do end up in the one or two pick position, but now is the time to start trading away the pieces that don't fit for the pieces you need to make the team click.

Top defensemen are horded by all the GMs in he league worth their salt. An interesting argument could be made that by sucking SO badly the past few years, the Oilers have forced their own hand to draft forwards (the best player overall) at #1 when the defensemen available at 2 or 3 would probably be better for the team. But if you're a GM, you can't draft Larrson over RNH or Gudbranson over Hall, can you?

As an aside, can anyone tell me why the hell the Edmonton ice is backwards versus the rest of the league? The TV camera angle gives you a shot of the penalty boxes instead of the benches like everywhere else in the league, which is really fucking confusing.

That's been a topic of discussion the last two years - draft what you need, or the best player? I can get behind the logic that says you draft the best player - but the implication of doing that is that when you draft two 'skill' forwards in a row, then that means you better be prepared to bump everyone down a spot and start trading / using those prospects that just got bumped to address your gaps. If it was me, Gagner, Piajarrvi, Hemsky, Horcoff (lol), and most of our prospects not named Hall, Eberle or RNH would be on the block for a couple of household name, established top 4 defensemen or a long term goalie solution. Regardless, in the team's current position, if there are any high level D picks that are deemed ready for the NHL ala Larsson or Victor Hedman, I'd draft them over Nail at this point. We don't need more small forwards, and even if you have them, experience shows that other GMs aren't going to trade you high level D for them after you've had them for a couple years. Potential to score a ton of goals doesn't mean anything if your team can't get it out of your own zone up to your forwards, and they just get frustrated watching their goalie or D not play at their level. (see Hall, Taylor)

edit: I should clarify - those are the ONLY conditions I'd be trading prospects or Gagner or Hemsky under. I fully expect though that Tambo will trade Hemsky for a bag of pucks and a bunch of draft picks that may or may not bear fruit in 5 years and do nothing but make the team worse right now.

I also don't understand signing Ben Eager and then playing him 3 minutes a game. You signed him to be a pest / agitator who can somewhat play, so let him play with someone who's not a complete scrub!

The Blues are probably going to try and move G Ben Bishop. He's currently 17-12-3 with a .926 save percentage and 2.36 GAA on a bad Peoria Rivermen team. The issue is free agency. If he doesn't play 17 NHL games this season, he becomes a UFA this July, so the Blues will try to get something from someone, whether it is just draft picks or a sign-and-trade type deal. With Elliott having signed a 2-year contract extension, Bishop won't get those games unless some bizarre set of goalie injuries happens to Halak and Elliott.

Sabres manage to put one together against the Habs. Miller got hung out to dry in the first and gave up a breakaway rebound under his leg, but then the Sabres actually seemed to remember how to play in the second and third periods, putting up two unanswered before cementing it with an empty netter.

Price had a decent game, what with facing 39 shots to Miller's 28, but that's a lot of shots to stop, especially when your offense is getting over 2.5/1 in the second period.

I didn't realize there was controversy... I saw the goal and thought it was pretty sick.

There is certainly something weird going on there in that replay with the clock hanging. Malicious intent seems like a stretch to me, though... someone would have to be on the ball pretty hardcore to do that on purpose. But never say never...

When reached by ESPN.com, Kings general manager Dean Lombardi responded with a curious email:

"Those clocks are sophisticated instruments that calculate time by measuring electrical charges called coulombs -- given the rapidity and volume of electrons that move through the measuring device the calibrator must adjust at certain points which was the delay you see -- the delay is just recalibrating for the clock moving too quickly during the 10 - 10ths of a second before the delay -- this insures that the actual playing time during a period is exactly 20 minutes That is not an opinion -- that is science -- amazing devise quite frankly."

Am I the only here who thinks Lombardi's in depth knowledge of the clock's technical workings is proof he's guilty of hiring someone to manipulate it? I'm not trying to start a rumor here or anything, I'm just saying...

Pekka Rinne is friggin' ridiculous. Blues outshot Preds 43-37 yet only scored 1 goal. Rinne made several absolutely ridiculous saves in the 3rd period preserve the Preds one goal lead before they secured the game with the empty netter.

One thing that was absolutely ridiculous - Langenbrunner and Hornqvist accidentally hit knee on knee and both went down awkwardly. While Langenbrunner is starting to get to his knees, Legwand raises his stick to shoulder level and cross-checks Langenbrunner square in the back with what looks like a clear attempt to injure type cross-check. The ref stares right at the cross-check, turns his head and looks at Hornqvist while calling absolutely nothing. That is the kind of non-call crap that is driving me nuts when guys will be falling over, a stick touches their leg after they start falling and a hooking call results.